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The airplane, unveiled at the EAS 5 last week, is inventor John McGinnis' entry into the NASA/CAFE Green Flight Challenge scheduled for this July. The prize pot for that contest is $1.65 million.

The design of the aircraft is, as McGinnis describes it, "half sailplane-half fighter jet." Its name comes from the idea that the aircraft synergizes six proven aeronautical principles:

Laminar flow

Non-planar configuration

Wake-immersed propulsion

Open thermodynamic cycle

Pressure thrust

Optimum volumetric displacement waveform

The aircraft's shape produces extremely low induced drag and like the canard designs that inspired it, is incapable of unintentional stalls and cannot "spin" when stalling - proven in this case through computer simulation.

The aircraft is designed around the turbocharged, liquid-cooled, 200hp diesel DeltaHawk engine, which is undergoing FAA certification in Wisconsin.

And so ...

A very cool design with a lot of potential in aircraft of several energy sources.

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